As a consultant I sometimes run into smaller customers that really like the bare bone virtualization technology that VMware ESX provides and buy the starter edition (which comes pretty cheap)
The problem with the starter edition is that you do not get a lot of the cool features that comes with the ESX enterprise edition and virtual center, but the costs from the starter edition to a full blown enterprise edition with virtual center is pretty big for some of my smaller customers.

One of the features missing is the ability to clone your virtual machines or creating virtual machines from templates in an easy way. A cheap and pretty simple way to get this functionality is to use the (free) VMware Converter 3.0 product.

Here it the procedure for cloning a windows 2003 VM for example

1. Create a VM (a “master” image) of a Windows 2003 installation in ESX and make sure it’s shutdown

2. Download VMware converter and install it on a windows computer (vista is not supported yet !) Link to download

3. Download the MS sysprep tools from MS and unpack them (in this case windows 2003 Link)

4. Open the VMware converter and click on “Import machine” this will start the “VMware converter Import Wizard”

5. Choose As the source machine your ESX server and select your master image

6. Choose as the destination server your ESX server

7. Customize the machine’s computer name (sid), ip address, etc (here you are asked for the location of the sysprep files from step 2)

and your done !

Please be aware that the windows vm image is copied over the network from the ESX to the computer running the converter and back to the ESX server, so it can take some time (depending on your network speed, disk read speed etc.)

I will post a more detailed guide with some screenshots pretty soon.

rg
Stefan Schuller

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I just started this blog for a couple of weeks ago and I have already have my first link to stefanschuller.com from vmware.com !
This is a good starts and makes me want to put more virtualization info out there.

Virtualization Tips:

Great blog start from Stefan Schuller:

ESX Server: Keeping Time on Your Side
Control ESX Server from your PocketPC
Guide: performance tips for running Citrix Presentation Server on vmware ESX

Here is the link

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Dell has posted a bunch of videos which demonstrates the HA, DRS and vmotion features in vmware virtual infrastructure 3

Very interesting it might be usefull as a demonstration if you need to convince your management about why virtualization technology is a good idea !

here is the link

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I have created a guide (with links) on how to configure time on your ESX servers.

It explains how to change your timezone (after installation) setup the NTP protocol for keeping the correct time and why you should disable the “windows time service” in your windows vm’s

here is the link

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